This year, our ongoing Active Schools Project was delivered in County Cork in partnership with the Cork Sports Partnership. Anthony Collins visited 15 schools from around the county over the last few weeks giving a demonstration and training as well as presenting the schools with a rope.

The program culminated in the inaugural Cork Primary School Tug of War blitz that was held today. 12 Cork schools who took part in either this years active schools program or last years, travelled to the Neptune Stadium in Cork City. We had a fantastic turnout with 78 5-a-side teams entered and 400 3rd and 4th class students taking part on the day. This was our largest primary school tug of war event held to date.

The teams were divided into groups of five and a round robin competition was run with each group. There were all girls teams and all boys teams, but most teams taking part were mixed teams of both boys and girls. The teams all competed together and some great work had been done in advance by the teachers, with no obvious advantage for teams whether the were mixed, boys or girls, 3rd class or 4th, showing the true value of teamwork to win out.

There was some fantastic competition and enjoyment throughout the day.

We would like to say a huge thank you to Maurice O’Sullivan and all the staff at Cork Sports Partnership who put in a massive amount of work to ensure the whole day ran smoothly. We would also like to thank James Kirby and the community coaches who helped with school visits and who looked after all the refereeing today. Lastly we would like to thank all 12 schools, teachers and students for travelling and taking part and for helping us make sure the blitz kept running well all day long despite the large number of teams.

We look forward to building on the success of this program in the future, both in further partnership with Cork Sports Partnership, but also woking with the Active School Flag initiative and LSP’s in other counties.